


Balizarde

by Cunien



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Humor, Period-Typical Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 03:33:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1330378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cunien/pseuds/Cunien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Porthos has a theory: that a man's sword is his soul wrought in metal. And his sword is big, and brutish, and no amount of finery will make it otherwise.</p><p>This began as a little fic on Porthos's ostentatious clothing and sword, and turned into Angsty!Porthos trying to figure out who he is, and deal with the prejudices aimed at him. Warning: period-typical racism, I think. I've made a big deal of it here, because I wanted to explore how Porthos, and his friends, would react to this. I actually have no idea what the attitudes were in Paris at the the time, this is pure conjecture so that I can make Porthos angsty and angry, Aramis angry and then wise, and Athos mostly just drunk. Set before d'Artagnan joins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Balizarde

“You can tell a lot about a man from his hat,” declares Aramis if he believes you’ll sit still long enough to listen, and sometimes even when you won’t. “A man’s hat is an expression of his very soul.”

Then he will hiccup, swig from his bottle, slurred words piling up against each other like a cart behind a stubborn horse. Porthos only quirks an eyebrow, and huffs out a laugh, staring intently at the bottom of his glass.

Porthos disagrees utterly, but he lacks the eloquence to explain, especially when he has drunk as much as he has tonight, and especially when talking to Aramis. Aramis, who is a poet through and through. Aramis, whose honeyed words and turn of phrase, elegant as a courtier, make Porthos feel like a braying ass in musketeers clothing.

No, Porthos thinks, it’s not a man’s hat that speaks of his soul, but his sword.

A hat can be warped and shaped by the wind and the rain and the hands of its wearer, and then, with heat and water, it will be re-shaped once more, fickle and wanton. It can be dressed with fine feathers and silks. Porthos knows from bitter experience that a gentleman is not made by the clothes he wears, but still he strives to _look_ the part, as though the expensive clothing and rich fabrics will somehow seep inside and make him something other than the boy from the Cour de Miracles, the boy who doesn’t even know his age. A metamorphosis, from the outside in.

But a man’s sword is truer than the clothes he dresses himself in, truer than love or any woman could ever be, or at least in Porthos’s experience. A sword hilt eases and shapes to fit the hand that grasps it day in and day out. A sword can protect you without even being drawn - its presence alone speaks words. Porthos can’t count the times his hand, just drifting to the pommel at his side, has quelled the fire in another man’s eyes. And there’s a poetry in that, though it’s not of gilded words and elegance.

Porthos glances at the sword: its grip is lined, cupped by a net-like guard inlaid with fine etched detail. It is _huge_ , there’s no getting around the fact. The blade is broad and flat, the pommel and hilt balancing the weight with its own size. Propped against the table beside Aramis’s slim blade it seems nothing less than a two-handed broadsword in comparison, workmanlike, thuggish and brutal.

Yes, a man’s sword is his soul wrought in metal, and all the ornamentation and filagree in the world can not hide the true quality of Porthos’s blade.

*

Aramis wipes the blood from his sword with a disdainful quirk to his lips, and slides it back in its scabbard. “I do so hate to stain poor Peregrina with such an inferior class of blood,” he states, toeing the nearest corpse with his boot.

“Peregrina?” Porthos asks, the word tasting strange on his tongue.

Aramis shrugs, dons his hat with a flourish and smiles. “Peregrina.”

“Like the pearl?” Athos asks, his lips quirking.

“La Peregrina. A famous pearl, of great beauty,” Athos explains, as he unties his horse and swings up into the saddle.

“Just as precious,” Aramis says, patting the pommel, the graceful swirl of thin metal that twists around the grip into the cross guard,  “Just as beautiful.”

“Yes,” he declares with mock wistfulness as he mounts his horse. “Many a lady of Paris has sighed for the beauty of Aramis’s sword.”

“And pricked themselves upon it too, I s’ppose?” Porthos smirks, while Athos rolls his eyes and Aramis laughs, long and loud.

*

Porthos has had many swords since first he joined the Musketeers. Beautiful swords, slim and elegant, all clean lines and finesse, the blades of gentlemen and courtiers.

Blades that snapped and shattered when he swung, blades that were lost like a seamstress’s needle in his huge hands.

This is the only one Porthos has been able to keep for any length of time, the only sword that fit him utterly. He’d been proud at first, gambling (and cheating) long into the night every chance he could, counting out his winnings as he handed them over to the swordsmith each morning. Filigree, he wanted. Etched metalwork and elegance, he’d ordered the man, who’d sighed and done the best he could.

And Porthos fairly preened over the thing, at first. It was strong enough to withstand the sheer power of his swing, its grip fitting perfectly in the span of his hand, balance just right. It felt like a natural extension of his arm - and _that_ , right there, is when he began to fall out of love with it.

He knows what the Red Guard call him: _The Musketeers’ Mulatto._ It makes his skin prickle, bringing with it all the unspoken words like _slave_ and _animal_.

He is a Musketeer, but he belongs to them only so much as any of their number do. He is a free man.

But the Red Guards laugh, and watch him in the taverns and street corners, a scornful curl to their lips. They think him nothing more than a brute to do the Musketeers bidding, a brainless thug.

They’re careless with their jeers, they’re not concerned if Porthos should hear. And every time, he will sit there, hunching in on himself with a bitter smile flickering quickly across his face. But he will not fight them, no matter that they insult his honour and he has all the right in the world to challenge them (and all the desire to smash the scorn from their faces with his big, _mulatto_ fists).

He will only reach out and slam Aramis back into his chair when he begins to rise with fists clenched and face drained white. Porthos will shake his head and smile at Aramis.

“Nah,” he will say.

“But Porthos…”

_I’m not a brute_ , he wants to tell Aramis. I _’m not an animal_.

Which doesn’t mean he won’t relish in the beatings he and his fellow Musketeers will give the bastards the next time they should have reason to fight the Red Guards. Porthos is not a brute, nor an animal, but neither is he deaf or cowardly. He is only careful that, though he may punch just a little too hard or a little too long the next time they meet, he will never let them see him rise to their taunts.

Still, it’s not just the Red Guards who look askance at him. Paris is a big city, and he is not the only free man of colour, but the men who look like him and manage to pull themselves up from the mess of poverty and treachery that hovers like a miasma over large swathes of the city...well: they are few and far between.

The Musketeers, after a short spell of wary caution had by and large welcomed him into their number. Anyway, he had proven himself time and again, saved enough of their damned lives for the whole regiment to have no doubt that he was one of them, through and through.

And his size and strength had worked in their favour many times. Treville, amongst other things, is an expert general, with an uncanny (and unsettling) ability to size a man up within an instant, to know with certainty where best to place him, what his strengths and weaknesses may be.

Porthos wonders, sometimes, if Treville might have had more of a hand than they thought in bringing he, Athos and Aramis together.

But still he often finds it exhausting, this constantly having to prove himself to the world outside. He’s seen it all: suspicious merchants and landlords, scandalised gentlemen, fine ladies who he realises with humiliation after hearing snatches of hushed conversation, pay him attention purely for the thrill of intimacy with a _savage_.

 

Of course, it is not everyone who behaves in this way - Paris is a big city, cosmopolitan and full of many different kinds of people. But it is enough to weary him, coupled with his own sensitivity and - as Aramis had remarked, only once, when he did not know Porthos well enough to understand how much it would hurt - _a chip on his shoulder the size of Versailles_.

In a tavern one night, when he and his friends are already well into their cups, a servant girl is caught off balance by a rowdy patron and staggers sideways. Porthos, despite being well and truly drunk, has an excellent sense of balance (a fact remarked upon with jealousy by his friends many times in the past) - with one arm he catches the girl and sets her on her feet, while the other steadies the tray in her hand.

She is a tiny little thing, and Porthos fairly towers over her. He tries to think of something to say, something suave and witty such as Aramis might say, but his tongue is heavy and slow with alcohol.

The look of terror in her eyes makes something small and brittle break inside Porthos. She backs away, rubbing compulsively at the arm Porthos had caught to steady her, and he finds himself too weary to really feel much, anymore.

The others say nothing: Athos is too drunk to notice, and Aramis swallows tightly, brows lowering into a frown.

*

It’s later that Aramis finds him in the alleyway outside, sitting on the cobbles still slick with recent rain. His legs stretched out, hunched in over the bottle in between them.

“Alright?” Aramis asks, wobbling as he comes to sit beside him. Porthos’s arm shoots out to steady him and Aramis smiles in thanks.

“Alright,” Porthos answers, after a while.

“She’s was just a silly little girl, Porthos,” Aramis says, because of course he knows what’s wrong, because he never could hide a thing from Aramis.

“And we’ll not drink here again,” Aramis states, pompously, swiping the bottle from Porthos and taking a long pull. “We shall take our business elsewhere, and where Athos is concerned at least, that’s a sizeable fall in income for them.”

Porthos huffs a laugh, but doesn’t look up, and the other man seems to understand that he will have to do the legwork in this particular conversation.

“You are as God made you, Porthos,” Aramis says, looking at him steadily, and it makes Porthos’s heart start to see the earnest glint in his friend’s eyes. Aramis smiles, and corrects himself,  “You are as God -and the Cour de Miracles -made you. There is no shame in any of that.”

Porthos shakes his head, a quick tight snap. “I’m not ashamed,” he says, and it’s important that Aramis should know that. “It’s not that.” But he can’t quite find the words to bend and shape and carry the weight of what he wants to say.

“My apologies,” Aramis says quickly, hand on heart, “I did not mean it to sound like that. Only…” he sighs, frustrated. “There is no use in trying to prove to the world that you are one thing or another. The devil take what they think! Here,” he says, rising on unsteady legs and standing in front of Porthos, staggering sideways a little before he steadies himself, arms spread wide. “What do you see? Who am I?”

Porthos doesn’t want to point out that he’s drunk so much he can see two of Aramis right now.

“A musketeer,” he says petulantly, feeling as though he is being tested, “...elegant,” he says after a moment, his cheeks colouring a little. “Refined. Poetry and court manners and handsome and bloody…. _elegance_.”

Aramis laughs. “My friend, the world thinks I am a seducer of women, a fop and a dandy.”

“Which you are,” Porthos points out.

“Which I am,” Aramis agrees, swigging from the bottle.

“But you’re more than that,” Porthos says, after a while, and is rewarded with a slow smile from his friend.

“God makes us,” Aramis says, sitting back down, “Our pasts shape us. But we, and only we can decide what sort of men we are."

“You really think so?” Porthos asks. He thinks of the Aramis he met years ago, and the marked difference in the man when he returned to Paris at the tail of a long train of carts, loaded with the corpses of dead Musketeers. Though he will always be the first amongst them to smile and jest, the Aramis who came back from Savoy was a little older, a little more brittle than before.

Aramis seems to see the doubt in his friend's eyes. He settles beside Porthos with a sigh. “I’m not saying it’s easy.”

Aramis looks at him, earnestly. "You have fought your whole life to cheat with the hand that you were dealt. And you've won, Porthos. A lesser man could not have done so. He would be a thief, on the streets or at the end of a gallows rope."

“But I’m a Musketeer,” Porthos says, and saying it out loud seems to dampen the rising tide of uncertainty.

“But you’re a Musketeer!” Aramis grins, gesturing broadly, “The criminals cower, the ladies quiver! Porthos du Vallon!”

Porthos can’t help but grin. His hand comes to rest on the hilt of the sword, laid out in its scabbard beside him.

“You should name it, you know,” Aramis suggests.

“Nah,” Porthos says, dismissively, “Wouldn’t know what to call it. Big lump of a thing.” He quirks a smile at Aramis. “ _You_ name it.”

“Me?” Aramis asks, a little shocked.

“Fancy words are your thing.”

Aramis makes a great show of umming and ahing for some time. Then smiles and goes quiet, looking up into the clouded night. “Balizarde,” he says, firmly.

“Balizarde?” Porthos laughs.

“Balizarde and Peregrina!” Aramis declares, patting the hilt of his own sword, buckled at his waist, “The adventures they shall have!”

“But... _Balizarde_?! Seriously?”

“I heard it somewhere,” Aramis shrugs in a non-comittal sort of way that he has made all his own, “It fits. It’s big and showy and very... _Porthos du Vallon_.”

Porthos laughs and ducks his head, “Porthos du Vallon.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Aramis smiles after a while, and Porthos feels his lips quirking in reply.

“The two of you are insufferably sentimental when you drink,” comes Athos’ voice from the darkness behind them. “Can a man not be left to pass out in silence anymore?”

Aramis is half way down the street before Porthos even has a chance to stretch his legs. “It’s your turn, Porthos du Vallon!” he calls back over his shoulder.

“Bastard,” Porthos grumbles amiably, rising to his feet and taking a moment to let the rain-washed cobbles stop spinning beneath him. His fingers slip and fumble a little, but he’s able to get Balizarde buckled back in his place at Porthos’s left hip.

“Right, Athos. Let’s get you up.”

**  
  
  
  
  
  
**


End file.
